Thoughts of a Common Man

I completed my 5th straight day off of work. Well, kind of. There have been tasks involved in the upcoming new job - it’s called onboarding - been a long, long time since I started a new job - life has changed. Every day, I’ve received packages at the door and email instructions to sign up. Yesterday morning, I had to find a place where I could drop off my I.D.’s to verify it’s me. The appointment was for 9:10 and it was the only thing on the agenda. I handled it like an old, retired guy, arriving 15 minutes early, worried about getting stuck in a line. And the thing about it, is that I have received a few work calls, but my clients know the deal. I can’t visit this week. There was no urgency involved in picking up the call. The best part? On Sunday I played golf and said: “I haven’t looked at my phone once.” I dug in the cart and it wasn’t even there! I’d left it in the car!! Might be the longest I’ve gone without looking at a screen in about 15 years. It gave me an idea. I have left

Greystone is a tremendous golf course in the Rochester area. Just a beautiful place, and every hole is a challenge. I’d played it before a few years back, but taking advantage of a week off, I called my Syracuse buddy and we arranged the outing. Best part was my buddy, Al was also free to play… …and the fact that the constitution is being trampled only came up once. As my son, Sam has said: “The best thing about golf is that nothing else matters when I have a golf club in my hand.” I agree, and I had a tremendous round a few weeks back so I’m not even worried all that much about how I’m scoring - I scored decently and had a great 6 or 7 hole stretch - but there were a half dozen times when I looked around. At one point, I turned and checked out the scenery from the green and I just nodded to Al. “It’s beautiful,” he said, knowing exactly what my head nod meant. The sun was shining. Not a cloud in the sky. Great conversation among all of us, and a few laughs. Towards the end of the roun

It all started with Lyndsy Wagner when she was on ‘The Bionic Woman’. I was just a kid, but man, I was head over heels in love with her. I used to hate the scenes with Lee Majors where they talked about their love. (I also realized that if it came down to either me or Lee Majors I was gonna’ lose - dude was married to Farrah Fawcett for crying out loud - I was 6’ tall, 110 pounds with zits). Around that time I was also wildly attracted to Winnie Cooper on ‘The Wonder Years’. I’m pretty sure that the show was so well-written that I was in love with Winnie because the stories were so heartwarming. I had to move on. My next love was Angie Harmon when she first hit ‘Law & Order’. To this day, I will watch the dated episodes of that show and not follow the plot at all.  I only look up when I hear Angie’s voice. As a matter of fact, Rizzoli & Isles still makes my watch list as I’m writing reports - Angie is a classic beauty (and my cousin Gail had her as a student years and years ago

It’s always strange for me when someone I know tells me that they read my books and it’s weird for them because they think of me as they’re reading the story. I didn’t quite grasp what they meant, and hoped that they’d get caught up in the story and not me. I kind of get what they’re saying now because I just finished reading my sister Carrie Lynn’s excellent first book, ‘Eyes on the Horizon’. Now, I had read the story a long while ago, but a whole lot of work went into the end product. As a writer, I always try and guess along with the author because I can see the plot lines, and I’m often critical of plot lines that come out of nowhere as the author tries to unpaint the corner he’s stuck in. There was none of that in ‘Eyes on the Horizon’! I didn’t have any moments of, ‘Come on, now, that doesn’t work!’ I caught all the subtle lines that we shared in conversations and I was proud that Carrie defined her characters clearly and used them to propel the story forward. I’ve also coached h